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What was it that Damien heard from Rouchouze about SSCC spirituality? I am going to try to synthesize it under a few essential headings:

JESUS AND MARY - We are consecrated to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. These two hearts are intimately united in virtue of the mystery of the incarnation. God comes to us when Jesus is born of Mary. The union of these two hearts, the mystery of love and redemption blooming from them, is the vital principal of our Congregation. We live and die in their service.

FAMILY – The Sacred Hearts exercise a parental role toward us. We are their sons and daughters. For that reason we are brothers/sisters. We are brothers and sisters because Jesus and Mary bring us into a new family. In that family, the sons and daughters try to resemble their parents.

FOUR AGES – In order to know and be steeped in the love manifested in Jesus and Mary, we should know the real life of Jesus, as the Gospels present it, in all its stages (childhood, adolescence, public life, death on the cross) and do particular ministries that help us draw close to the sentiments of Jesus and Mary (schools, missions, adoration, ascesis etc.)

WOUNDED HEARTS – The hearts of Jesus and Mary are wounded by the evil that we all do. Anyone who knows the Sacred Hearts develops a deep awareness of the power of evil acting in the world and of the sin that causes such suffering to people. The poor, sinners and the afflicted are the suffering flesh of Jesus, his least brothers and sisters. We are called to enter into the interior suffering of the hearts of Jesus and Mary, broken (“offended”) by the lack of love and by the disdain for God’s sons and daughters.

REPARATION – The purpose of the Congregation is to repair this suffering. We are ready to do everything necessary to relieve the sorrow in the heart of God caused by the lack of love among humans. The son or daughter of the Sacred Hearts forgets himself and offers himself as a VICTIM (“the spirit of immolation”), that is, unreservedly and throughout one’s life, so as to share in God’s work of saving the world through love.

ADORATION – Adoring Jesus in the Eucharist, we bring him our sin and that of the world, we intercede for suffering humanity and for ourselves, we let him draw us into the shelter of his loving heart, and we find there the strength to be his servants and witnesses.

DEVOTION – The purpose of the Congregation is also to spread the faith, to proclaim the love of God, which is unknown by so many. We want people to become enflamed by this love and get caught up in it. This is what we call “devotion to the Sacred Hearts.”

This is what Damien learned of the founders from Euthyme Rouchouze. Damien assimilated this and it became the foundation of his inner self. This way of living the faith directed all his energies and forged the robust and committed missionary that we know. The SSCC vocation was for Damien a spiritual itinerary, a journey along which he savored God in an overwhelming way, a path that would lead him to say without exaggeration and from the heart:

“My greatest joy is to serve the Lord in these poor sick children, who are rejected by other people” “The joy and contentment that the Sacred Hearts lavish on me make me think that I am the happiest missionary in the world.”